


Distant

by jmtorres



Category: Pet Shop of Horrors
Genre: Alternate Universe, Epistolary, M/M, Xenophilia, Yuletide 2005
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-25
Updated: 2005-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:31:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmtorres/pseuds/jmtorres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>D's next letter arrived carried by a pair of robins. Before he even opened it, Leon had half-written his reply: Dear D, How are you? I'm fine, except for the fact that I feel like frigging Cinderella, and by the way, if singing mice show up at my place, I am hunting you down and killing you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Distant

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ria/gifts).



> AU, diverging after Volume 10, Episode 1 of the manga, "Departure."

Doppelgänger

Okay, so Leon wasn't the brightest bulb on the branch, or however that one goes, but he was slightly ashamed of how long it took him to twig. Really, the fact that D was wearing black slacks, a collared shirt, and a sedate tie should have been clue enough, but Leon just asked what occasion could get D out of a dress and offered him an apple cheesecake, with apple slices cunningly arranged in the shape of a flower on top. The fact that D didn't _take_ the cheesecake, or at least putter off to find a serving wedge, should have been another clue, but the only strange thing Leon actually noticed when D turned to glare at him, ignoring the cheesecake entirely, was that both of D's eyes were violet.

"You're not Count D," Leon blurted out. Count D had one violet eye and one golden eye--kind of like David Bowie. Leon had caught himself looking into them, D's eyes, far too often, so he knew. _Knew._ And they weren't contacts, either, because Leon had seen him go for days without the opportunity to change them, like that time they were kidnapped.

"I am indeed Count D," said D icily.

"Not the D who was here yesterday," Leon protested.

"My grandson, you mean," said D. Grandpa D. Leon had heard that Asian people aged well, but this was ridiculous. Aside from the eyes, Grandpa D was a dead ringer for D junior. D double junior? Since his dad was a D, too. Leon's head hurt.

"Yeah," said Leon. "I guess. Where is he?"

"I am afraid that he has returned to China," said Grandpa D, not sounding the least bit apologetic. Kinda smug, really.

"To--" Leon exploded. "He can't! He's a suspect in eight unsolved homicides! He's involved in drug-trafficking and slave-trading! He can't just _leave the country!_ "

Grandpa D frowned at him, a curious expression, all in the angling of his brows--no creases around his perfect mouth at all. Must be how he avoided getting old age wrinkles. "Oh, dear," he said, sounding remarkably like his grandson. "Did you make that clear to him? He didn't mention it before he left."

"Yes! Yes, I--" Leon stopped, unable to recall what he might have actually said on the subject. "Look, do you have a phone number or an address or something where I can reach him for questioning?"

Grandpa D's hand flicked out, serpentine, and he snagged a slice of caramel-covered apple off the top of the cheesecake. He held it delicately between the nails of his thumb and forefinger for a moment before it disappeared into his mouth. His eyes closed in an expression of rapture, the kind of rapture that Leon hoped to put on D's face. Seeing it on his grandfather's face made Leon's stomach feel strange. When Grandpa D's eyes opened again, he said, businesslike, "Wait here."

Left alone, Leon said to the goat-thing on the couch, "Okay, he's freaky. Freakier than the _usual_ D."

The goat-thing set its mouth in a mournful grimace, as if to say, "You don't know the half of it."

Grandpa D returned with a single sheet of paper, translucently thin. "Rice paper," he explained. "Mail to China is prohibitively expensive, so we make our missives as light as possible. Please, write down your questions to my grandson on this, and I will send them to him."

Leon took the paper, unsatisfied, but for some reason unable to protest. "Right," he said. "I'll just--write."

"You may leave the cheesecake, if you like," Grandpa D said magnanimously.

Leon could tell a dismissal when he heard one. He put the cake down on the coffee table and turned to go.

* * *

Demands

Leon drafted his letter on his computer at work, because he was looking through all his old case files on D, and his hand-writing was messy, anyway. He went back to the very beginning, but he couldn't figure out what to ask about that first case, the Robin Hendrix case, because, weird as the tale had seemed at the time, the Count had apparently been up front with him about it. Lizard, looked like a woman, could kill people with its eyes. Yeah, that was par for the course in D's shop. D had explained the thing with the rabbits pretty well, too, except...

"Man-eating rabbits, D?" Leon wrote as his first question.

> How the hell did those things kill the buyers? And those kids in the park? Even hopped up on sugar, that's ridiculous. And by the way, not all Chinese people can fly up on rooftops. There's a Chinese guy over in Accounting that trips over his own feet every time he gets up for coffee. And that wasn't really a dragon that Christmas, was it?

Leon was pretty sure it was, but it was the principle of the thing. Three-headed dragons did not hatch in freaking Los Angeles.

> And that shark thing you sold to Ethan Grey wasn't really a mermaid. And what the hell happened that time in the museum? It wasn't a dream, was it? You came home with a baby sabre-toothed tiger--the one you didn't want me to shoot its mama, even though she was going for the giant deer thing. Don't try to tell me I'm crazy, either, because it _wasn't_ a dream and you _were_ there and I _saw_ the fangs on that kitten. And how the hell did you convince that trannie to take the fall for you when you blew up the hotel the Guranan emperor's mistress was staying in? And you were selling drugs to Annessa Burtley's friends at that singles' club, weren't you? They said it was incense but I don't get high off your incense and I breathe it every damn day, nearly. And that time you gave me that plant, Gattolotto. You said it died for me. Why did you give it to me? Did you know I was gonna get shot? Why didn't you just warn me? And that time at that horse race, why did you rope me into that instead of blowing the damn whistle yourself? What did you see in that girl

Leon hit the delete key a few times.

> horse anyway, if you had to cheat for it to win anything? And that gay Marquis guy

Leon stared at the screen a few moments, before deleting that too. Leon had pretty much believed D about the guy being a vampire. And if he was a vampire, then clearly he had been sucking on D's neck for reasons other than being gay.

> And you got Kelly Vincent killed, too. I don't know how or why or what you sold him and Roger Stanford, but I know you did and you should just admit it. And how did you get ahold of that cat, the one with the emerald necklace? You getting involved with the Chinese mafia succession didn't surprise me at all, but how many little kingdoms have you got your sticky fingers in? And how about that Jeanne LaCroix chick? Where did she disappear to? Did you sell her some pet that killed her, and you just got lucky and we never found the body? Maybe it ate her. And that butterfly you gave me had something to do with that freaky dream I had about Harry, didn't it. What is it with you giving me weird dreams?

Although, if Leon was going to be honest with himself, some of those weird dreams weren't D's doing, unless he wanted to blame D for being hot. Leon sighed.

> Was that one even a dream, either? I've heard of the butterfly effect, you know, even before they made that stupid movie about it. And that assassin kid--you really took him out with a cup of tea? Chris said he _did_ have a scorpion tattoo before you did whatever you did to him. How the hell did you get it off? And what did happen that vacation we went on, when I'm supposed to have saved everybody from the volcano and I can't remember a damn thing about it? Did you do something to me to make me forget? Slip something in my damn tea? What don't you want me to remember?

Something to do with a week on the beach and too much tequila, maybe? Leon didn't think he'd have slipped up, not with Chris there, but damn. He wished he knew.

> And that groupie of yours, that Monica chick, how the hell could you stand there _smiling_ when her plane crashed? "Let's go have some tea," you said. Fuck tea. Did you really hate her that much? She adored you. And when Sam and Josie came to get Chris, how did they end up with that fox thing with too many tails you sold the Wallaces that they all thought was something different? What the hell is it, a shapechanger? Did it change into Chris? Is Chris really home back East now or have you sold him off as a dog or something?

Leon didn't really think so, but there was something off there.

> And damn it, what the hell part of "Don't leave town, we might have questions" translates to "Run off to a country we don't even have a fucking extradition treaty with," you bastard?

That about filled up a page, so he stuck the rice paper in the printer and tried to print it off. The printer got about two lines into the letter and tore the rice paper.

"Shit," Leon said.

What he ended up doing was printing the letter off on plain paper and going over to the petshop to ask Grandpa D for another sheet of the special stuff, to copy it down on. Grandpa D chided him for being careless but let him have the extra sheet anyway. It was probably less expensive than sending Leon's plain paper letter to China.

Leon got partway into copying the letter over and realized how weird it was that he was denying mermaids and dragons with one breath and insisting that the museum thing hadn't been a dream with the next. Was he just contrary, or what? He wrote into the rice paper letter,

> Was that the first time you lied to me, about the museum? You always told me straight before, even though I didn't believe you and you didn't expect me to. But Robin Hendrix, Ethan Grey, those fucking rabbits, that dragon--you just told me straight out. And then you said that trip to the jungle was all in my damn head.

He didn't get the whole thing all on one side, but the ballpoint he was using didn't leak through as badly as he thought it was going to, so he kept writing on the other side.

He got to last bit of what he'd written before and the thing about Chris seemed like a weird place to end it, and he had a little space left, so he wrote, "So how are you doing? Sold anybody any freaky pets in China?"

Leon stared at the letter a few moments longer, trying to ignore Grandpa D tapping his foot two feet away. But he couldn't think of anything else to say, so he just signed his name to it and handed it over.

Then there was nothing to do but wait.

* * *

Doldrums

Leon went by the shop after a week to see if D had answered, and then three days later, and then at two weeks, but after that he figured he didn't want to piss Grandpa D off by showing up uninvited anymore. The guy didn't like Leon, and Leon didn't like him either. He probably could have sweetened him up with a few desserts, but he didn't want to. The cheesecake was one thing--Leon hadn't known D wouldn't be there--but deliberately taking Grandpa D those bribes felt weirdly disloyal. Not that tarts and eclairs had been meant to imply any kind of loyalty to D, but, well, Leon didn't want to. The old fart hated him anyway.

So three and a half weeks after he'd given the damn letter to Grandpa D, he was sitting at his desk staring off into space while Jill sat on his desk, legs swinging, eating the sandwich she'd bought him for lunch to get him to eat _something_ , that he hadn't been hungry enough to eat more than half of.

The phone rang.

Jill picked it up and answered, "LAPD, Detective Orcot's desk." After a moment, she said warmly, "D? Is that you? It's Jill! How are you? Did you have some kind of fight with Leon, 'cause he's been moping around like somebody _died_."

Leon looked up and tried to take the phone from her, but it was too late. "Oh, I see. I'm sorry, sir, I didn't realize. Well, I'll give him the message." Jill hung up and said, "D's grandfather says he's got a letter from D for you."

"Geez, finally," said Leon, up and pulling his jacket on.

"Where did D go?" Jill asked him. "And when? You didn't say _anything._ "

"He went to China," said Leon. "Nearly a month ago."

"Yeah? And?" Jill asked. "What for? Buying some rare animal for the shop?"

"Hell if I know," Leon said. "It's not like he told _me._ "

"Oh, Leon," said Jill, and that was about all he could take, so he breezed out of the station before she could squeeze any more pity in.

* * *

Description

D's letter ignored almost everything Leon had said, answering only two points directly. On the matter of Chris, D said,

> I assure you, my dear detective, the petshop does not deal in humans, and your brother is most definitely human. Ten-chan, the "fox thing," had intended to do Chris a favor, mistakenly believing that he wished to stay in the shop rather than return with his sisters. The misunderstanding was cleared up, and, as far as I am aware, Chris is indeed with his family.

And about the museum thing, D answered,

> I did, at the time, believe that it was a dream. There are some states in which two people can share a dream, and the experience can seem very real for it, but it is nonetheless a dream. I was as surprised as you to discover the fanged feline you noted had stowed away in my suitcase. I have not been able to verify its lineage, but then, it can be difficult to find subjects for comparison in a species that has been extinct for approximately ten thousand years.

As to why D had mysteriously left, Leon received the explanation:

> My grandfather feels that I have become overly influenced by American culture, and wished me to reconnect with my roots, so to speak. It was not my place to disagree with him, and so I went. I did not believe him when he first accused me of this corruption, but since I arrived, I have discovered that my land has changed. My land has changed, or I have, one, and I do not know which. Perhaps my grandfather is correct, after all.

The rest of the letter was all about what D was up to in China. "I sold a rich gentleman a parrot," he wrote.

> He didn't deserve it and the parrot didn't care for him, but the parrot did take a liking to the serving maid the gentleman had hired to care for the pets he bought, so I permitted the sale. I wish now that I hadn't, for the parrot is dead. She was carrying messages between the maiden and her lover, and the gentleman, who fancied her for himself and was the jealous sort, had the parrot killed. I suppose it would interest you to know that the maiden escaped and has married her lover, but I can hardly consider it a happy ending to the tale. Even though the parrot willingly sacrificed her life that the maiden should be happy--well, she must have been mad to do so, that is all I have to say. The parrot believed that the maiden was the reincarnation of her sister. Whether that was true, or even whether that makes the maiden deserving of the parrot's sacrifice, I do not know.
> 
> I sold a sea serpent to a young man interested in curiosities. I informed him as part of his contract that she must be released into the sea on certain dates in order to mate, but being tame, she would return to shore after laying her eggs. The customer distrusted this and gave her sedatives to prevent her from leaving when she grew agitated, but miscalculated the dose and killed her with it. She managed to bite him before she died, and the bite proved fatal. I am sure you would disagree with me, my dear detective, but equal to my sadness at her death is my satisfaction at her abuser's. There is a saying, if you love someone, let them go; if they return to you, then they are truly yours. I feel certain she would have returned to him, had he trusted her enough to let her go into the sea, but man is ever distrustful.
> 
> Most recently, I have sold a cricket, but it is too soon yet to tell if that will end poorly or well.

After that were various pleasantries, D asking after Chris and Jill and the animals in the shop, if Leon had noticed at all when he visited (which D disparagingly suggested that he hadn't). It seemed like a weird letter. Leon wondered if the pet stories were supposed to tell him anything--like D was sacrificing his own happiness in leaving the petshop, to make his grandfather happy, or that he would come back in his own time if Leon stopped fussing after him, or something.

Leon finally decided he didn't know, and wrote back that Jill was fine and still pushy, and Chris was fine, talking a lot more than he had been, on the phone even, and the pets Leon had seen were fine, but that the goat-thing agreed with him that Grandpa D was a freak, and that was saying something. He wondered if Grandpa D would be too insulted to mail the letter, but he'd apparently mailed the first, so Leon didn't bother editing that out.

Grandpa D could stew in his own juices, anyway.

* * *

Doubt

Leon had a _warrant._ Missing person, giant squid in a tank, copy of a contract with Count D's Petshop, _warrant._

If it had been D, Leon probably would have stormed down without a warrant and just shaken the story out of him, but Leon was so going to nail Grandpa D. Giant squid, his fucking _ass._

"Hey, you," Leon yelled as he entered the shop. He hated to call Grandpa D by his name, and didn't think he could get away with tacking the "Grandpa" on when actually addressing the guy.

Grandpa D appeared, looking annoyed. Today was a pale cream shirt and dark gray slacks, with a blue tie. "It has only been ten days since your last letter was sent," Grandpa D said. "My grandson has not yet replied."

Leon waved the contract at him. "You sold somebody a giant squid, and it killed him. You're coming downtown with me."

"May I see that?" Grandpa D requested, plucking it from his grasp. He read the contract. "Hm," he said thoughtfully. "A giant squid. That sounds like a pet my grandson would sell."

"Your--" Shit. It was signed _D_ but that could be either of them. The contract didn't prove anything. But the date on it-- "Gimme a piece of that rice paper," Leon demanded.

Grandpa D silently fetched a sheet for him.

Leon wrote on it, so fiercely he tore it and had to start again halfway down the page,

> DID YOU OR DID YOU NOT SELL SOME POOR BASTARD A MAN-EATING GIANT SQUID ON THE TWENTY-FIFTH OF LAST MONTH?

He signed it and handed it to Grandpa D. "Send him _that_ ," Leon said furiously.

Grandpa D creased it carefully into letter-thirds and said, "As you wish."

* * *

Denial

D's reply came back more promptly than Leon had expected, but maybe the big, angry letters had hammered home the urgency.

> A kraken, my dear detective? In the first place, one would have to be very desperate to eat a man, as almost all sea creatures dislike eating mammals. It gives them indigestion. (Except the cetaceans, of course.)

And actually, the squid hadn't eaten the guy. His body had floated up from the bottom of the tank the day after Leon had sent his accusation.

> In the second place, I have been, as you know, away for nearly two months now. I was not in Los Angeles on the twenty-fifth to sell anyone anything. Do you honestly believe I might have returned without contacting you at all, and then left again?

Which wasn't what it was about at _all._

Leon wrote back to say,

> Fine, you have an alibi. Out of the country blah blah blah. The coroner ruled death by stupidity anyway. It turned out the guy went for a swim in the damn tank--how stupid is that???--and then drowned.

The coroner _had_ said "death by stupidity," unofficially, but Leon had made up the bit about the drowning. She'd said he'd choked on something that wasn't water--something that mysteriously wasn't in his throat anymore. She was guessing cock because she also said his ass looked like he'd been gang-banged, but Leon wasn't saying _that_ to D, and anyway, she'd changed her tune from "cock" to "tentacle" after she'd heard the body was found in a squid tank, and Jesus.

> What the fuck is wrong with people? Who goes swimming

Euphemism.

> with a giant squid? What the hell was he thinking? Sorry I accused you out of hand. Your grandfather said it sounded like something you would sell somebody, and I didn't even realize until I'd left that he didn't _say_ you'd sold it, or that he hadn't. Sneaky bastard. (Dear sneaky bastard, if you are reading this, which I bet you pretty much always do: Fuck you.) How did that cricket thing turn out?

* * *

Dichotomy

D's next letter arrived carried by a pair of robins. Before he even opened it, Leon had half-written his reply:

> Dear D,
> 
> How are you? I'm fine, except for the fact that I feel like frigging Cinderella, and by the way, if singing mice show up at my place, I am hunting you down and killing you.

It was kind of nice to get a letter he knew Grandpa D hadn't already read, though. Then he opened it up and found out why.

D had guessed the bits Leon had left out about the buyer/squid relationship, though he was pretty circumspect about it, as if guarding Leon's tender innocence. "Some men have unnatural passions," he had written, and went on to obscure it with several references to non-lustful passions, but given how many of D's customers thought they were buying a hot chick instead of an animal, Leon figured they both pretty much got the point.

Leon wondered what the squid-buyer had thought his squid looked like. Dead boyfriend? Dead girlfriend with strap-on?

A squid?

"As to my grandfather's remark," D wrote, and this was the bit Leon figured had gotten him a letter Grandpa D didn't get to see,

> I can only assume that it was a slur against my own preferences. It was, in part, a disagreement over this matter that led to my current sojourn.

Leon forgot about the Cinderella bit and wrote back (when he had hunted down the scrap of rice paper left over from the first letter),

> I always knew you loved your animals but I didn't think you _love_ -loved them. Please tell me squid do not turn you on. At the very least, please tell me the squid has to look like a hot chick before it turns you on.

He'd sent that back with the robins and gone into work when he got a call from Grandpa D, informing him that D had replied to his last letter.

"But I just sent that letter this--" Leon paused. "This week, wasn't it?" he said. It was too soon for D to have answered the letter from this morning. D must have sent two letters, so his grandfather didn't realize he was being cut out of the loop.

The letter D had routed though the petshop said hardly anything about the squid. It did go into detail about the business with the cricket, though. A father had traded his son for a cricket to fight in cricket matches, but in the end had come pleading to D to give his son back, because all his winnings from the cricket matches were worthless without his son to share them with. D, generously, had agreed.

Leon wrote a quick response to this letter, but he'd said most of what he'd wanted to say in the one he'd sent off with the robins. Thinking to head off this double-letter business, he asked Grandpa D, "Why do you let me write to D, anyway? You don't like me, and from what I can tell, you think I've corrupted him with my evil American ways or something."

Grandpa D gave him a cold look. "Would you like to see the letters he writes me?" he asked.

"Uh," Leon said. "I guess."

Grandpa D showed him a note with a few lines of graceful Chinese characters on it. Well, Leon assumed they were graceful, but he didn't really know. D's Chinese calligraphy might be atrocious for all he could tell. Not that that was likely. His handwriting in English was certainly beautiful.

"I can't read it," said Leon. "What does it say?"

"Hardly anything," said Grandpa D. "He hopes his letter finds me well. He informs me that he is in good health. The weather is nice. In short, nothing of substance at all. If I wish to know anything of what is going on in his life or in his thoughts, I must rely upon his letters to you, even if that does make me a 'sneaky bastard.'"

"Oh," said Leon. He went away feeling sorry for the old man, and at the same time angry at himself for giving the guy the time of day. But maybe D didn't want to completely cut his grandfather off, even if they were fighting--because Leon had wondered if the moral of the cricket story was directed at Grandpa D, not him. It would be like D to pretend to ignore his grandfather on one hand and lecture him metaphorically on the other.

Leon wondered what kind of cricket Grandpa D had got in exchange for his grandson.

* * *

Disclosure

The robin-borne answer to the squid question was,

> As a general rule, no, I am not attracted to squid. However, I am sure my grandfather would object to my taking a partner with even one tentacle, or even to my taking a partner at all. He has led a monk-like existence and expects the same of me.

Leon mentally translated "one tentacle" to "cock," went out to buy his own stack of rice paper, and wrote back gleefully,

> You're gay. You're gay and your grandfather had a homophobic fit about it. Only instead of sending you to Christian camp like an American homophobe, he sent you back to China. Was it the dresses that tipped him off that you were queer? Is there some girl you're supposed to marry to cure you of your evil ways? Are you coming back with a wife?

The robins were a lot swifter than Grandpa D about getting letters back and forth. Leon began to suspect that the original three and a half week delay had been more due to dislike of him than overseas postal service.

D wrote,

> Perhaps I was not clear enough in my last letter. No, I shall not be bringing a wife back, unless I am seeking yet another way to annoy my grandfather. And that is a truly unwise motivation for marriage, and would be unfair to any wife I might take.
> 
> I do not wear dresses. My robes are traditional attire--far more traditional than my grandfather's suits. I don't know why he ever Westernized.

Leon got out the last letter to see what D thought he hadn't been clear enough about. The monk-like existence? If Grandpa D expected D to be celibate, that would explain why a wife would piss him off. But other than that, it still sounded like D was totally gay.

> He can't have been that monk-like, considering he has a son. You are actually related, right? He didn't adopt your father? I mean, you have to be. You look just alike. It's freaky.

D answered,

> By your standards, it certainly is freakish. Both my grandfather and my father reproduced by means of parthenogenesis. It is little wonder I resemble them so closely.

Leon didn't answer that letter quite as immediately as he had the rest. It took some research, for one thing. And then after the research, it took some what-the-fuck time. His eventual reply was,

> Ha, ha. You're not a plant. (Yes, I had to look up parthenogenesis in the dictionary. You like making me feel stupid, don't you?) Go on, pull the other one.

D's reply took longer than usual, too, and seemed frostier when it arrived.

> As you have said, Detective, when I tell you the truth, you do not believe it, and I do not expect you to. Nonetheless, it was the truth I told you. Perhaps you will one day recognize it as such.

D also punctuated this exchange with a letter through the petshop and Grandpa D. He related a story he had heard about a wizard who tried to bring a common man to another plane of existence. He had the guy smoke something or other and told him that nothing he saw was real, and whatever happened, he must not cry out. The guy saw his wife get murdered in the hallucination, got killed himself, got reincarnated as a girl, grew up through various trials, got married to some guy, bore a kid, all without uttering a sound, recalling the wizard's warning--but when his husband killed his baby, the guy finally cried out, and the spell was broken, and he was sitting back on the mountain with the wizard, who was cursing him for a fool. If he had stayed silent just a little longer, he could have cast off all earthly cares and reached some incredible stage of enlightenment.

Leon figured Grandpa D wasn't the intended recipient of that particular tale. He wrote back via the robins,

> Yeah, I get it, you're the wizard, I'm the fool. What do you want from me?

Because, really, he didn't _know_ why D told him shit sometimes, if it wasn't just to mess with him. Even if it _was_ true, what the hell did D want, if not to laugh at him chasing his own tail about it?

> If not belief, perhaps, then, acceptance.

Leon stared at that letter for a while. It hadn't ever really occurred to him that D might tell him things just because he wanted someone to know.

* * *

Delta

Leon figured what "acceptance" meant was D wanted him to act like it was true even if he didn't think it was, which didn't sound like a bad strategy. If Leon just went along with it, got D talking, maybe D would eventually say something about it that made some _sense._ So Leon asked questions. They were probably stupid questions and definitely not things he would ask normal people about _their_ sex lives, but D already thought he was a total philistine, so no damage to his reputation there.

> Explain this to me. If you, if your, whatever you are, reproduces by parthenogenesis, why would you have any interest in a partner at all? I mean, like, biologically. Attraction's biological, basically, isn't it?

And Leon knew what a load of horse crap he was saying, because he knew gay sex didn't serve any biological, reproductive purpose, but people wanted it and had it anyway. But at least they were wired for sex in general, and it didn't sound like D _was._

D surprised him, though.

> Most plants capable of parthenogenesis are also capable of sexual reproduction. Parthenogenesis, in biological terms, is meant to be a fallback, a way of carrying on the species when there is no partner near enough to mate with. Evolution prefers binary sexual reproduction to straight duplication, my dear detective. It introduces more change into the system, allows for recombination of traits which might be stronger than the parental variations.

Which Leon figured was D's way of saying he was wired for sex, too.

> If parthenogenesis is supposed to be a fallback, then why is your grandfather acting like it's the only way to do it? Why is he freaking out at the idea that you might fall in love with somebody and get laid and have kids the old-fashioned way?

Leon asked, though he was pretty sure D was still gay as fuck. He remembered the reaction D had had to the suggestion that he might get a wife, horror of horrors.

> Sexual reproduction is not 'the old-fashioned way,' my dear detective. Asexual reproduction was the earliest form of reproduction, and the lower classes of life, such as bacteria, still rely on it exclusively. In my family's case, we are the last of our species

Which was the first time Leon had gotten an actual acknowledgement of that fact, that D was another species, even if the parthenogenesis thing had been kind of a tip-off.

> and for me to sexually reproduce would be to end us. The dilution would result in a hybrid, which might not be capable of reproduction at all. This is my grandfather's fear, and I understand it. When I do produce offspring, it will likely be as my father and grandfather have done. That does not mean I do not desire a partner for purposes of companionship. I think our kind was once a social species, and that our isolation has been enforced by our near extinction, for it is a terrible, near unbearable weight to me to be alone.

That blew Leon away. The textbook bio stuff, he struggled through, but being lonely, he got. And it made him angry, too. Why should D put up with his grandfather's crap? Especially since it sounded like his grandfather was being totally paranoid and D agreed with him on the main point anyway.

> You know, you're a grown man, or a grown whatever. You don't have to let your grandfather or anybody else tell you that you can't have somebody. Unless it's a cultural thing and I'm being a dumb American, but no, you know what, even if it is, maybe after three generations of you being exactly the same, it's time for some change, and you get to be the one to make the changes. Have a spine. Stand up to the old fart. Do whatever you want with whoever you want. Don't just sit around being lonely because he told you to. That's _stupid._  
> 

Leon waited for a reply, but the robins didn't come back. He was half-expecting a call from Grandpa D that D had sent another one of those freaking Aesop's fables to tell him off with, but that didn't happen either.

What did happen was, at four o'clock the next morning, he got dragged out of bed by someone knocking on his door. He was ready to be pissed until he got a look through the fisheye, and then he didn't know what to feel.

It was D.

* * *

Decision

Leon opened up the door and got a good look at him, red Chinese dress from his throat down to his ankles, suitcase hanging from his hands in front of him. Leon made sure the eyes were right, just in case, and then hugged him, hard. He figured D did it whenever he could get away with it, so turnabout was fair play.

D went stiff and startled in his arms, and then the suitcase hit the floor and he hugged Leon back, gingerly, those freaking claws of his carefully curved over Leon's bare shoulders, just barely cutting into his skin.

The hug went on slightly longer than was permissible among men of manly heterosexuality, but Leon was half-dressed in sweat pants and D was wearing a dress, so the manly men thing was pretty much right out to begin with. Leon had given up on being totally straight a while back, and D was, well, probably here for a reason. Leon eased up his grip around D's waist and said, "You wanna come in?"

"I--" D seemed confused. He brushed Leon's face with the tips of his fingers and the edges of his nails as he disengaged from him. "But--" He stopped, and bit his lip. Lord, that looked pretty, this close up. "Are you certain, Detective?" he asked.

"Pretty sure, yeah," said Leon. He shuffled D into the kitchen, felt embarrassed about how ratty it looked, last night's dishes in the sink, folding card table and avocado fridge from the seventies. But D had been here before, so he wasn't gonna get worked up about it. "I gotta have some coffee," he said, filling the pot up with tap water. "You want some tea? I've got some herbal stuff Jill gave me last winter when I had that sinus thing, I mean, it's not real tea, it's in bags. But. Maybe you'd." He trailed off, looking over his shoulder at D.

"That would be fine," D said. He still seemed kind of shell-shocked. Maybe he was just tired. Long flight. Red-eye. Yeah, that was it.

Life-changing decision? Way more likely.

"How was China?" Leon asked inanely. He popped a mug of water into the microwave and got the tea bags out. Citrus something. He remembered his nose being so stuffed up he couldn't smell it at all, and then he'd known he was getting better when he noticed his apartment smelled like lemon.

"China was--" Leon turned to look at D, who was blinking. "I wasn't in China," he admitted.

It was Leon's turn to blink. "Where the hell were you?"

"It is difficult to explain," D said. "The location is geographically unstable. It is. Perhaps you would call it the Heavens. It is where my people are from."

Leon eyed him, but decided he wasn't going to touch claims of godhead for the moment. "I've got some sugar cookies," Leon said, pulling the package out of the cabinet. "I know they're not up to the stuff I usually bring you, but hey, sugar's sugar, right?" The microwave beeped, and Leon pulled out D's water and set it in front of him.

D mechanically dipped a tea bag into the mug. "I--I had meant--" He stopped, and frowned down at his tea. Leon dumped two spoonfuls of sugar in and picked up the tea and set it in D's hands. D held it, and then seemed to remember what to do with it, and sipped it delicately.

"You okay?" Leon asked.

"Yes," D said faintly. "Only, I had meant to tell you--before you invited me in--I believe writing letters has spoiled me, Detective. I had grown accustomed to being able to speak my piece without your interruptions."

"Inviting you in was an interruption?" Leon asked. "Geez. I just thought you wouldn't want to stand around outside at four freaking AM." The coffee was percolating, so Leon poured himself a mug and stuck the pot back in the coffee maker. "All right," he said, sitting down next to D. "Say what you were gonna say. I'll try to keep my yap shut."

D collected himself. "I had meant to say--that you were right, and that I had made my decision, in defiance of my grandfather, and that I needed to ask you to make a decision as well, because I could not decide for you, and then, when you invited me in it was supposed to mean that--" He looked at Leon reproachfully and gulped at his tea.

"That I invited you into my life," said Leon. Good grief. Freaking drama queen. He pulled the package of sugar cookies open and held one out to D. "Eat my cookie. It is a cookie of great symbolic importance. It's a binding contract, like at the petshop." D accepted the cookie, blinking at him. "If you eat the cookie, it means you agree to, to, to call me by my first name, and feed me meat sometimes, and tell everyone I'm your boyfriend."

D paused with the cookie halfway to his mouth. "Are any of these terms negotiable?" he asked.

Leon frowned. "Depends. Whaddya got a problem with?"

"I dislike eating meat," D said. He added softly, "Leon."

Leon relaxed, relieved. "Get used to it," he said, bluster and teasing. "I'm an omnivore. You wouldn't deprive any of your animals, would you?"

D's mouth curved up in a smile. "No, I suppose I wouldn't." He took a bite of the cookie.

"LAPD accepts no responsibility for the consequences if you break any of the terms of your contract," Leon said warmly.

"I don't intend to," D assured him. He hesitated. "And--this pet I now own. Does it care to be touched?"

Jesus. Leon hadn't thought he had any kind of submissive ownership kink, but he was wrong. "Yes. Yes, it does," he said.

D put his hand on Leon's chest. "Kissed?" he asked.

Leon didn't bother answering. He just went for it. Cookie crumb mouth, sweet and wet. "Oh, Jesus," he said. "Your grandfather's going to _kill_ me, isn't he?"

D nuzzled his neck. "I'll protect you," he promised. "After all, you're mine now."

Like a dog. Leashed. Stupid dick, thinking that was hot. "Don't get any ideas," Leon growled. "You're mine, too."

D gave a little laugh. "I think you would be surprised," he said, "to learn how many of the animals in my shop agree with you on the subject of mastery."


End file.
